See below an overview of R.U.R.C's time on Tour this year from Social Sec Rachel Esker!
"On the 9th of April the biggest social event of the rowing calendar had begun, Salou Tour 2012. It had been a lot of hard work organising coaches as unfortunately the rowing team had been split up into three groups all on different ones! After a 28hour coach journey we all made it to Salou in one piece.
On arrival we joined the 9 boys who had been travelling with the university of Kent at the pub the Rio Grande which would become our regular for the week, and had our first drinks in Salou!
As we headed into the evening on the first night the theme was wedding, as you can see from the pictures some of our lovely rowing boys looked amazing in their dresses! (Ian Esplin in particular with his rather fetching wig!) With the use of the R.U.R.C beer bong getting significant use over that night and the rest of the week. The whole team ended the night in one of the main clubs Kiss, and was a fantastic but blurry start to the tour!
The Next morning was beach day!
With the weather being nice we decided to have some games which involved a relay race and a dive into the sea 3 times. As you guess with this being a social event there was GIN involved. We then started our next game in two teams, dig your own rowing boat with all the trimmings in the sand! That’s right the space for the cox, riggars, oars and amongst other parts such as the bow ball! Thank you to all the seniors who made the events of the beach day run smoothly.
As we progressed into the evening the theme for the second night was pirates, tonight I was glad that Sam Sears was about for help with the pre drinking events he was a huge help! Again we played numerous games and endedup in a club called Snoopies which I can safely say we did not leave until about 5.30 in the morning.
The Thursday unfortunately we had some rain throughout the day, so we decided as a team to go out for dinner, the whole 28 of us went to our favourite little pub once more, the Rio Grande. Numerous pints were drunk and we all had some good food! The evening events that night were Greek and Roman style with everyone dressing up in Toga’s, and we even had Gladiators, Medusa and a Minotaur! It was the night where we allowed a senior fresher switch. This meant that for one hour the fresher’s were in charge of the whole senior team. Much to our dislike we had to eat cat biscuits that were covered in vodka and sambuca. Little did they know it was going to be turned around the next day! We headed to Pacha that night, where we saw so epic pole dancing from Mike Benson.
Being dressed in our R.U.R.C hoodies was an experience that many people had ever experienced on a booze cruise before as normally it’s the weather for bikinis and shorts. But despite the cold weather Amy day continually danced away in her bikini! It may have helped that we had a three hour free bar which was supplying us endless amounts of sangria and beer. A few of our lads were the first into the water when we stopped the boat! Which was then followed by some of our more daring girls. Some even got a trip out in a rib boat out into the sea which they all enjoyed.
Friday was our final night on tour, where our team all wore our tour tops which we were all given individual comical names, some more embarrassing than others! We had a few games for the fresher’s as pay back for the events of last night, a sausage with cheese in the middle with wiped cream comes to mind… We left about 1.30am after all the games and fun and when all the booze had run dry. R.U.R.C ended up in both kiss and snoopies with many of us not sleeping as our check out time 7am! And congratulations to Jeppe who got named our Tour hero for 2012!
I would like say a big thank you to Sam Sears for his help throughout the evenings. Along with Sarah Fort and Richard Swoboda on the last night and everyone who came to help carry with drinks! The fresher’s for being such good sports with everything that we did. Amy Austen for sitting through the meetings with me. Thank you for our lovely gifts that myself, Amy and Sam received on the last night. And as ever we missed our other Social Sec, Sam Kirby as you can see from all the pictures he was around through out the week even if it was only a cardboard version of himself! We said a goodbye to our third years who will not be joining us on next years tour who each and everyone of them will be missed!
It was a pleasure being your social sec on tour and I loved every minute of it! No doubt we will be doing it all again next year!
Rachel!
xxxxx"
